


Five Times Ryo Failed at Confessing to Someone

by Jain



Category: Johnny's Entertainment, Kanjani8 (Band), NewS (Band)
Genre: 5 Things, Chromatic Source, Community: k8_exchange, F/M, First Time, M/M, POV Third Person, Past Tense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-07-13
Updated: 2009-07-13
Packaged: 2017-10-05 21:13:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/46094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jain/pseuds/Jain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ryo's not as smooth as he'd like to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times Ryo Failed at Confessing to Someone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [travelingpsycho](https://archiveofourown.org/users/travelingpsycho/gifts).



The first time Ryo fell in love, he was twelve years old. Aoki Midori was in his class at school. She was tall--well, taller than him--and had short hair and really nice arm muscles from playing baseball. He used to watch the way her muscles shifted under her skin while she was writing.

He'd go watch the girls' baseball team practice sometimes; Aoki-chan was the best player on the team. She'd shove her hair out of her eyes impatiently, shifting back and forth on the balls of her toes as she waited for the pitch, and Ryo would put his jacket in his lap to hide his completely embarrassing reaction to the flex of her thighs and the slight jiggle of her ass.

One day another girl on the team hit a foul ball into the bleachers. Ryo scrambled to get it and threw it to Aoki-chan, who was on third base.

She nodded and shouted her thanks, and Ryo felt his grin light himself up from the inside.

He was getting up the courage to confess to her--no, _really_, he was going to do it any day now--when one of the girls on the track team caught sight of Aoki kissing an older boy by the bleachers after school had let out. The news flew around the school, and the vice-principal had a talk with Aoki. She stopped kissing her boyfriend on school grounds after that, but she was perfectly happy to giggle and gossip about him with the other girls in the class.

With the exception of one week when they had some sort of misunderstanding about a five month anniversary, Aoki and her boyfriend stayed together for the rest of the year, and that Spring Aoki-chan's father got transferred to another city and she had to leave.

Ryo decorated a pencil box for her as a going away present and moped a little, but didn't cry at all.

Years later, Ryo would look back on this incident and wonder how it took him as long as it did to figure out that he was gay. Still, it made a good story--young love thwarted by an older rival and a final, painful separation--so Ryo told it more than once to entertainment reporters so desperate for any bit of gossip that a twelve year-old's crush constituted news.

* * *

Yamapi was about as different from Aoki-chan as you could get. He was tall and good-looking, but he couldn't play baseball, he didn't have distracting arm muscles, and he didn't break the rules and laugh about it afterwards. He was more fun to hang out with, though, and Ryo had kind of given up on baseball players after Aoki-chan.

Also, Yamapi had a _very_ nice ass.

Sometimes, Ryo thought about telling him that. But Yamapi was popular with the girls, and he obviously liked it, even if the attention embarrassed him. With Aoki, Ryo had no chance because she'd found someone better; with Yamapi, he had no chance because _anyone_ was better, as long as she had breasts.

"Ryo-chan!" Yamapi shouted, and Ryo turned around to get a faceful of water.

Ryo spluttered indignantly, Yamapi tossed him a spare water gun with an unapologetic grin, and the battle was on. Sneak attacks aside, this was one of the best things about Yamapi; he knew it wasn't much fun for Ryo to wrestle or play rough when most of his friends were twice as big as he was (though Ryo's mom assured him that he was due a growth spurt any day). So Yamapi found other ways of playing with Ryo that didn't involve sitting on him while Ryo struggled ineffectually to retaliate, and he did it so casually that no one even commented on the special treatment. He really was one of Ryo's best friends; nothing else mattered more than that.

* * *

"Where should she sit?" Hina asked.

"Two seats down from Ryo-chan," Yoko said. "That way he's close enough that he can't stare at her for the entire show, but not right next to her, where he'd just turn red and cover his face every two minutes."

Ryo felt his face burn with embarrassment, which was an even worse reaction than usual because of the scenario Yoko had just painted in their minds. "Shut up."

"You should just confess to her and get it over with," Yoko advised, more seriously.

"No!" Ryo said, along with half of Kanjani8.

"That would be mean," Yasu said. "Ryo can't mislead her like that."

"He could tell her that part, too," Subaru suggested. "You never know. Maybe Leah Dizon would think it's romantic that Ryo-chan loves her even though she doesn't have a penis."

A roar of laughter greeted that comment. Ryo dropped his head to the table with a loud _thunk_ and resolved to spend a lot more time in Tokyo, with shiny new friends who didn't think that humiliation was the greatest sign of affection.

* * *

Clambering down a sheer cliff wasn't Ryo's idea of a good time, but he could admit that the view was gorgeous. The mountain breeze was cool in spite of the hot sun, and the landscape was a sea of green and brown, with occasional splashes of color where flowers were growing.

Ryo turned from his contemplation of the cliff's edge--a camera tracking his every expression of chilled horror for posterity--and burst out laughing.

"What?" Yasu asked, smiling at him innocently from his perch on a boulder, the largest, blowsiest purple flower Ryo had ever seen tucked behind his left ear.

"That thing's half the size of your head!" Ryo said.

Yasu's smile widened, until it looked as though it were taking up half his face. "Isn't it gorgeous?"

"You look like one of our stylists has gotten her hands on you," Ryo said critically. He checked reflexively to make sure that there weren't any cameras hovering around to pick up that rude assessment, but the cameramen were still by the cliff, filming Ohkura while the professional rockclimber who'd accompanied them doublechecked his gear for him. Ohkura had a faintly bored expression on his face, but if the fans had any sense, they'd be more interested in the competent slide of the (rather attractive, for a man in his late 30s) rockclimber's hands over Ohkura's body.

_Ryo_ was. He wrenched his eyes away from the scene before anyone could notice his inappropriate fascination and sat beside Yasu.

"Ohkura looks good tied up, doesn't he?" Yasu asked.

"Yeah," Ryo said, just a touch of hoarseness in his voice.

Yasu tucked one of his hands companionably into the crook of Ryo's arm and leaned his head--the side not sporting the flower--against Ryo's shoulder. For a long moment, Ryo felt overwhelmed by a wave of affection and more than a bit of lust, feeling the soft heat of Yasu's body pressed against his side.

But that was just the same love he felt for all of them. Yasu got a little more than his fair share of it because he was sweet and understanding and a bit kinky in all the best ways. That wasn't sufficient reason to rock the boat, though, so Ryo just took one of Yasu's hands in his and held it quietly, enjoying the brief comfort without demanding more than that.

* * *

After Uchi was back without really being back--an occasional smiling presence in the halls of the jimusho, but not one-eighth of the occupants in a crowded dressing room, not one of the performers under the bright lights and roaring applause of the stage, not one of the voices in Eito's and NewS's melodies--Ryo found he needed to be around him more than ever.

It was strange; when Uchi had been suspended, he and Ryo had talked on the phone every day, but twenty-three and a half hours of each day were spent mostly not thinking of Uchi. When the suspension was lifted, on the other hand, each brief encounter in the jimusho was a reminder of how much Ryo had missed him, despite the fact that he was _right there_ in the same building with him.

Luckily, the lifting of the suspension also meant the lifting of the ban on interaction with Uchi. The rest of Kanjani8 caught on in a week, and alternated between mocking him and giving him officious and terrible advice, which Ryo shrugged off with the ease of long practice until the day that Hina threatened to tell Uchi himself if Ryo didn't man up.

Dinner that night was a fairly fraught affair. Ryo and Uchi went out to eat at one of their favorite sushi restaurants, Uchi providing some humorous, snarky commentary on the acting abilities of some of his coworkers in his current drama--not that he really had room to talk--and Ryo nodded and laughed along as best he could when his stomach was fluttering queasily.

After dinner, they went to Ryo's place afterwards for (totally legal) drinks. Uchi poured himself a lychee-flavored cocktail like the giant girl he was, and Ryo grabbed a beer for himself. Midway through his second beer, he thought he might actually be ready.

"Hey, Uchi?" Ryo said, his heart thumping doubletime in his chest.

Uchi shifted his gaze from the drama Ryo had put on mostly as background noise--the heroine had just done her ugly duckling transformation, which was a cliche that Uchi had a ridiculous and unironic fondness for--and turned a questioning look at him.

"I, um, wanted to tell you that. Um."

"I like you." Uchi smiled sweetly at him.

Ryo blinked. "I...what?"

Uchi shrugged. "You were taking too long to confess. I thought I should help."

"You just wanted to steal my line," Ryo said, his eyes narrowed suspiciously.

The smile on Uchi's face broadened. "That, too."

Ryo frowned sourly at the confirmation. "Congratulations. Does this mean I get to give myself your rejection, or will you do that bit, too?"

"Ryo-chan." Uchi shook his head, voice half-amused and half-exasperated. "I wouldn't have said it if I didn't mean it, too," and before Ryo could fully register his surprise, Uchi kissed him. Even the knowledge that the rest of Eito would probably throw them a mock-wedding, with all the attendant humiliation that they could pack into a single ceremony, wasn't enough to lessen the way Ryo felt when he put his arms around Uchi and kissed him back.


End file.
